a developing online archive of information about women of color and coercive sterilization

sterilization – japanese american women

There are reports indicating that Japanese American women were coercively sterilized during their internment in camps during World War II.

In March 1945 Representative Jed Johnson (D-Okla.) proposed that Congress undertake specific legislation for the long-term disposition of the Japanese-Americans in relocation camps – suggesting “we should make an appropriation to sterilize the whole outfit.”(Ordover 2003:160)

Alice Tanabe Nehira’s 1981 testimony during hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians indicated that her mother, who was rounded up along with over 110,000 Japanese Americans under Executive Order 9066, was sterilized without her knowledge while interned at Tule Lake in 1943. (Ordover 2003: 161)